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On his third drink, our friend finally admitted to us that he found our project unrealistic, idealistic even. He isn’t the only skeptic our ideas have produced. The desire to re-imagine and usher in the good Christian Kingdom sounds utopian. The idea of “bettering the world” sounds trite.
Specifically, our friend leveled the criticism that we are attempting to restore some imagined, romantic past of solidarity in the village and subsidiarity in the neighborhood; a past that is impossible to regain while liberalism’s big, hairy hand clutches the Church’s throat. What, are we going to abandon the power of our liberal nation-state when Russia and China have no intention of doing the same? Are we going to retreat from national politics while our enemies have every intention of using them against us? Don’t we need to fight? Don’t we need to accept the dominance of the state and try to bend it in our direction?
Attempting to recreate the scene of Thirteenth Century France is futile, yes. But the inability to identically repeat preliberal worlds does not mean that the only way forward is to grit our teeth and win mastery over society; to have the Church compete with liberalism and emerge as a victor on liberalism’s terms.
Our friend is mistaken. But his mistake is reasonable. It is the mistake of a sober mind. It is the mistake that we have all had to slowly overcome — because we were all raised in Red America.
Part of what identifies a conservative is the conviction that human beings fell, and fell hard. Leftists are the ones who believe humans are good. Socialists think they can make human beings peaceful and fair by tweaking the social machinery. But Republicans know better. As part of their better bumper sticker marketing goes: “Don't let them Immanentize the Eschaton.” Heaven comes later. Politics should remain realistic, sober, earthbound.
But we can’t believe this anymore. Catholics believe that the Holy Mass is heaven on earth. The life of the saints doesn’t come later; it’s on display at every church. It is exactly the purpose of Catholic political thought to immanentize the eschaton; to bring God to earth, bear Him within us, reveal Him to our neighbor. We are to sanctify the social order, not merely as a preparation for “the next life,” but to anticipate the next life now.
The pessimistic impulse of the conservative movement opposes Catholic hope. This is not the same hope as socialists have. Socialists think that a little technocratic rearranging will lead to a better society, that the material stuff to build Heaven is all about our feet, and that socialism just wants to put it all in the right order. But we don’t make Heaven. Heaven makes us. We don’t produce a peaceful social order. Peace is a gift already on offer. Socialism’s particular heresy is pelagianism, the fifth century conviction that Christ is unnecessary for man to become virtuous. Catholics know better: We only love because we are first loved; we can only build a peaceful social order because Christ has given us the grace necessary to be at peace.
The conservatives specialize in a different heresy, which is really a secularized Calvinism. For them, people cannot become better. Sanctification is limited by the bounds of post-fall reality. God’s overcoming of our sin is extrinsic; we remain as fallen as ever. There is no sacramental grace that enables our ascent to Him while here on earth; and thus for the Calvinist there is neither the Mass nor the Monastery; no places on this earth where the order of love is incarnate, really tangible and communicative. Conservatives express their Calvinism as a kind of realism: “Of course we all want everyone to be kind, and to share, and to forgive, but they won’t, and so our political aspirations should reflect that.”
But Catholics do not believe this. We believe in the reality of the saints; those human beings who really did surpass the depravity of sin and live a life of real virtue. Our monasteries have weakened, but remain; and so we can still catch a vision of Heaven on earth. God really does extend his transformative grace to people, and people can gladly accept it. In fact, in our families and our friendships we experience the reality of the possibility of human goodness every day. Through grace, we are called and enabled to extend this goodness. Some degree of real sanctity is possible for mankind.
We also believe, unlike the liberal protestant tradition, that man is social in his very nature. We did not stumble into reality as individuals, lost in a mysterious forest. We came from our mothers. We cannot help but find our identity captured in the relationships with others. And because we hold these two truths together — that man can be sanctified by God’s good grace and that he lives life in community — we also believe that society itself can be transformed by God’s grace. The communion of saints, the Church itself, is the visible evidence of this reality.
Say what you may about our bishops, but there is a reason why the homeless hang about churches and cathedrals. No doubt this infectious heresy called liberalism — with all of its strands — has infected God’s holy society, but He has not left us without hope.
Apart from Christianity, hope is lunacy. It is optimism — a blind desire to see things improve. But what about our world makes us think that the political order can actually get better? From a rational stance, we have little cause for hope. And yet there is something in us that compels us to believe in a joyous end. As Peguy famously wrote of hope:
It is she, this little one, who leads them all.
For Faith sees only what is.
And she, she sees what will be.
Charity loves only what is.
And she, she loves what will be.
Hope is a theological virtue — a habit of the soul that is absolutely and totally gifted to us by God alone. God gives us hope that we may love and believe. We cannot be pessimists if we are Christians.
Postliberals worthy of the name should hope for the end of earthbound politics; of the idolatrous parody of divine sovereignty. We should champion the realization of that order of love we call “subsidiarity” and “solidarity.” We should build the city of God without hedging and capitulating for fear of a human sovereign who would smash whatever piece of peace we manage to enact outside of the order of violence.
The second century father Origen dealt with this same criticism from Celsus, who wrote: “For, if you overthrow this doctrine [the power of the emperor], it is probable that the emperor will punish you. If everyone were to do the same as you, there would be nothing to prevent [Caesar] from being abandoned, alone and deserted, while earthly things would come into the power of the most lawless and savage barbarians, and nothing more would be heard among men either of your worship or of the true wisdom.” Quite right. If no one obeys Caesar, then Caesar will have no power, and the Barbarians can conquer the Christian along with the empire (feel free to replace Caesar with the US and Barbarians with North Korea). But whether under Caesar or under his Barbarian conquerors, the Christian would have to live under a human sovereign. And another possible order, without fear, will never be anticipated unless Christians are brave enough to forgo the security of Caesar and work to build societies founded in love, societies they can point to as exemplars and sacramental realizations of an order orientated towards beating the sword into a ploughshare.
Celsus was more-or-less right. Sure enough, the barbarians did come. Rome did fall. But this wasn’t the end. Rather, it was the beginning of something new, of the conversion of the barbarians. The transition was not fast, but it did happen. And when the Muslims came to sack Christendom, independent kings, lords, cities, and villages joined together at the behest of the pope to form one of the most devastating armies ever assembled — and without a divine Caesar. Few today believe these narratives to be anything other than wishful interpretations. But they are true. We are scared to receive the hope that our forefathers in the faith received, but history demonstrates that we can do this.
Is this utopian? No. We realize progress won’t come about neatly, an achievement born of switching about who holds this or that office. We have no particular right to believe that the new paganism will become the new Christianity without the blood of new martyrs. Only hope in the resurrection can truly allow a Christian to instantiate a new world, without looking back; to say, in earnest, what could they do, kill us? Don’t they know that we cannot die? This is Christian hope, and it is a far, far better thing than socialist presumption or conservative despair.